my built in mic (the laptop is a lenovo g50-30) is too low and a bit distorted. I've tried it on skype and even in the audio settings the orange bars are pretty low. The mic is pre-amplificated above 100%. Any suggestions?
UPDATE: news here. I've tried a recording session with "arecord -D hw:0,0 -vv -f cd ~/test.wav" and it worked :D. So it seems that the problem is a skype problem?!?! Btw the optione "allow to skype to auto-adjust volume" is disabled.
Update 2: i've tried the mic on my headphones. Skype works. I'm a bit confused now…
UPDATE 2: The solution is here: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=183740
Best Answer
If the microphone is a stereo one, the signals from both channels cancle each other out and become close to a null value. If you disballance both channels slightly, you may get it to work properly.